Booze Buzz: Brickskeller Can Be Yours for Only $12.5 Million!

<<EDIT #2: Not sure exactly what’s going on, but the listing is still active at www.costar.com as of 11 AM today (9/30). To find it yourself, click on the link above and do a search for properties in ZIP code 20037.>>

<<EDIT: As you can see from today’s (9/27) comments below, the owner has withdrawn Brickskeller from the market. Thanks to John Nemeyer with Randall Hagner for the update.>>

You’ve been there – several rounds into an evening of “Around the World” at DC’s most famous beer bar – when someone in the group has a brilliant idea. “We could totally do this,” is usually how it starts, before listing all the reasons that you and your friends are ideally suited to run a place just like the Brickskeller.

Well here’s your chance.

Though you won’t see a “For Sale” sign out front or a listing for an open house this Sunday, the Brickskeller is officially on the market. Randall Hagner Ltd. Showcase lists 1523 22nd Street – the “Brickskeller Dining House and Inn” – as being available immediately for the low, low price of only $12.5 million (down from $15 million a week ago). The best way to find it from the home page is to do a search for properties in ZIP Code 20037. The entire five-floor building is for sale, including 40-plus guest rooms on four floors and the two-floor restaurant/bar. The alcohol license will convey to the new owners, but you won’t be able to keep the memorabilia or even the Brickskeller name – the current owners will be holding onto those.

I can’t speak from personal experience, having never drunk enough downstairs to necessitate an overnight stay, but the generalconsensus is that the rooming house-style Inn has seen better days. Guest rooms share common bathrooms in the hallways and are accessed via stairs or a hand-operated elevator.

Though the new owner will have to build a name for the new place from scratch, it’s hard to believe that the Brickskeller’s cache won’t carry over and help them start strong. Assuming the place remains a beer bar (and why would you mess with success?), they would do well to focus on delivering what they promise; these days, the Brickskeller’s reputation isn’t entirely positive on that front. As the manager of another popular bar joked, the $12 million dollar price tag is “about a million for every beer they have in stock.”

Check out the flyer, a .pdf found on the sale listing page, for more details. And if you’re already drunk when you read this, do yourself a favor and sleep on it before making an offer right away.

Whoever may read this and might even consider investing in this place here’s a quick warning!: Forget about it! The place is infested with Alot of mice, and has a severe fruit fly swarm attacking all the patrons. The foundation is rotting away and there’s a terrible stench of rotting corpses in several places all over. The owner is just selling the place because he opened another restaurant near Gallery Place and he didn’t keep this place up. Tax time is coming and he won’t be able to pay it. The brick is not making any money so don’t believe the hype. I feel bad for his family who opened the Brick 50years ago. Dave buried this company years ago and now he’s just running away from his obligations.good luck Brick staff and find new jobs, I did and in good timing, too!

Who cane up with this? I would like to know since my wife and I OWN the Brickskeller and are NOT SELLING IT.
This post must be removed immediately. The Brickskeller is NOT for sale this is not true. We OWN the restaurant and we also own the word Brickskeller if these lies are not removed immediately you can expect legal action. The Brickskeller Dining House and Down Home Saloon is NOT for sale.

I personally spoke with Mr. Nemeyer before I posted this, asking him if the entire building was included in the sale and further asking about what furnishings and materials would convey with the property. He was direct and clear in his answers: the whole building is for sale, including the restaurant/bar on the lower two floors, and although the furnishings and memorabilia will not convey, the liquor license will.

If this information is incorrect, I would encourage you to discuss all of this with Mr. Nemeyer directly.

I’m happy to provide a statement to anyone who wants to contact me about the content of our conversation on Thursday. At no point did you even suggest to me that anything you were telling me was not for public consumption.

The listing for 1523 22nd Street, NW was publicly available on Hagner’s website – that’s where I first found it. I fail to see how my post’s drawing attention to it constitutes any wrongdoing on our part.

Because the listing has been withdrawn, I’ve included an edit at the top of the post to indicate this.